


What love tastes like

by narada-talis (sarensen)



Series: Pencil lines [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kitchen Accidents, M/M, Shiro is a terrible cook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29133654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/narada-talis
Summary: Shiro is terrible at baking, but an accident in the kitchen turns out to be a hidden blessing when it brings about a new step in his and Keith's relationship.//Very loosely set in the same universe asPencil lines and comet tails, but it's not necessary to read that first.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Pencil lines [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137905
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45
Collections: Sheith Cookbook





	What love tastes like

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission for the [All Good Things](https://twitter.com/sheithcookbook) zine~!  
> Thank you so much to Nyb, Jenn and Lole for the beta read💕
> 
> The recipe I was given to write a story around was this delicious recipe for [Sesame-Almond Cookies](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wX_O4-nCcTTDXRqMzzrS__-_mEUoNMPJ9ainJdpdC1s/edit?usp=sharing).

Keith parks his bike across the road from Shiro’s apartment building just before three in the afternoon. 

The breeze is cold on his face when he takes off his helmet, and strong enough to ruffle his hair. It will be Spring soon, but Winter isn’t quite ready to leave yet, exhaling its last token protests in dark, cloudy mornings that blanket the world with sulky, unexpectedly late drifts of snow. 

He jogs across the road, and his feet crunch on the dead leaves lining the pavement.

Shiro’s apartment building looks like it’s seen better days. Once-white wall paint has greyed and chipped here and there to reveal strips of the red brick beneath. Moisture stains drip from beneath each window sill like long fingers, and the numbers have long since worn off the keypad mounted next to the entrance.

The general decay barely even registers with Keith anymore; Shiro’s apartment itself is small, but well cared for. It’s always clean, and warm inside from the sun that comes through the windows in the mornings. It has a couch big enough for two to snuggle on and a bed big enough for more, and in the short time they’ve been together, it’s become Keith’s favorite place to be. In many ways, the building is like Shiro himself. It has taken a beating, but survived, and not only survived, but burgeoned into something new, something more.

The keypad doesn’t work, anyway. 

Keith pushes the door open with his shoulder and foregoes the elevator, choosing to take the stairwell hidden in one corner instead.

Keith can split his life into two definitive periods. His memories from Before are hazy, nebulous things that never properly take shape in his mind, as though he were trying to wrestle clouds into shape. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of. He’d suffered the consequences. Lived with the heartache of knowing he could have made different choices, but hadn’t. And yet the memories themselves are murky, distant in the way of mountains seen through an early morning fog. 

The exception is the night his dad died in the fire. Those memories are like crystals, hard and unforgiving, their sharp points always ready to remind him about that particular pain.

His memories now, in the After with Shiro, are like crystals too. But these ones are rose quartz, soft around the edges and charged with happiness. Each moment with him makes the pain of his past disappear a little more, like bathing in the glow from a fireplace on a frosty Winter’s evening. 

That glow is doused like a candle snuffed out when he rounds the corner.

He freezes, and his eyes widen. For a moment, he forgets how to breathe. 

White smoke billows from the cracks around the door. The high-pitched screech of an alarm comes muffled through the white-glazed wood. 

Sense memory overwhelms him, pulling him back years into the past. To the Before. To that night.

But this is not the same smoke that had choked him as he clawed through the ruins of his old house, trying to get to his dad. These walls haven’t yet collapsed, and there are no ashen-faced spectators watching as firemen desperately struggled to drag him away.

Inside of him, another voice—a stronger voice, a voice that belongs to the present, and not the scared ten-year-old Keith has temporarily reverted into—forces itself to be heard. It sounds infinitely calmer than Keith feels at this moment.

The voice says, “ _Shiro_.”

Keith sucks in a breath. Has it been a few seconds? A minute? Either way, he can’t wait any longer. He runs the last few steps to the door and pounds on it with his fist.

“Shiro! Shiro!”

No answer. Inside the apartment, the alarm is still blaring, and a frightening amount of smoke has started to fill the hallway. Keith’s eyes sting with it, and the back of his throat is starting to burn.

Down the hall, people start poking their heads out of their apartments. Keith barely notices them. The sound of their inquisitive voices is drowned out by the hammering of his fist on the door.

Still, there is no answer from inside. Keith growls in frustration, taking a step back and lifting his arm to cover his mouth and nose with his sleeve. He doesn’t have the key to Shiro’s apartment, but that has never stopped him before. 

There isn’t enough time to pick the lock. He thinks he hears someone saying they will call 911, but Keith knows from experience that they’ll take minutes to arrive, precious time that he can’t afford to waste.

There’s only one thing left to do. He clenches his fists at his sides, steels himself with a deep breath, and kicks the door with all the strength he can muster. The lock cracks right out of the wood, and the door swings precariously on one remaining hinge as it flies open, banging against the wall. Immediately, the shrill of the alarm grows loud enough to overwhelm him, making it hard to think.

Keith rushes inside, casting around desperately. Panic and smoke constrict his lungs. White smoke hangs in the air like a thick fog, blurring the outlines of the fridge, cabinets, and checkered floor. It partially obscures what Keith knows to be the living room, deeper inside.

“Shiro!” he yells, coughing on the last syllable. “Shiro!”

“K-Keith?” comes Shiro’s surprised voice from startlingly nearby.

Keith swivels around, and there he is. 

Relief overwhelms him, so strong it makes his knees wobble. Shiro stands near the stove, looking at him a little like a deer caught in the headlights. Keith barely registers the pink apron embroidered with little pastel-colored mice along the bottom edge, or the single oven mitt pulled over his good hand.

Smoke is rising from the charred black...somethings in the pan gripped in Shiro’s hand. He’s waving his prosthetic arm above it vainly. It does nothing to clear the smoke. Even more smoke is billowing out the open oven door, accompanied by a telltale lick of orange flames. Another tray of something is still in there, and that something is on fire.

It only takes Keith a second to react. 

He grabs the fire extinguisher from its clamp on the wall and directs the white spray into the oven. Once everything is covered in a satisfying layer of frost-like foam, he shoves it aside, rushing through to the living room to open a window.

Both of them are coughing. Keith keeps his sleeve pressed over his mouth as he returns to Shiro. 

“Keith,” says Shiro, then splutters through a rapid succession of, “How? What? Why?”

Keith doesn’t answer, taking the oven tray from him and hastily dropping it on the countertop when it sears his fingertips. He sticks his burnt fingers into his mouth, while taking Shiro’s face in his other hand, twisting it around and touching his shoulders, arms, waist. There are no obvious burns. Shiro looks fine, all in one piece, if a little sheepish.

Keith pulls them both outside into the corridor, where the air is slightly more breathable. Only then does his heart start to slow its frantic pounding. 

“What were you _thinking_?” he asks, and it somehow comes out sounding both more and less angry than he is feeling. Then his eyes slip down to the pink apron, the mice, and he amends it to, “What are you _wearing_?”

Shiro looks, if possible, more sheepish. “It’s Allura’s. She lent it to me.”

Keith’s mouth works silently for a while. Eventually, he settles on, “Explain.”

Shiro sighs, slumping into himself a little bit. “Coran wants us to expand Altea’s menu. He said the customers were getting tired of seeing the same pastries every day.”

Altea is the coffee shop Shiro works at. The owner, Coran, had been a friend to Shiro’s father. He’d left the management of the shop largely to his adopted daughter, Allura. They’d taken Shiro in when he’d lost his arm in the war and supported him through his recovery, had given him a home and a job to help recover some of the medical costs. Shiro feels like he owes them. He’s grateful, but it’s a subdued kind of gratitude, tinted with feelings of guilt, of a debt that can never wholly be repaid.

Keith is grateful to them for an entirely different reason. 

Altea is where he met Shiro. Coran is the one who’d arranged it, who reached out a hand to Keith when he needed it, who gave him a chance when no one else would. When no one else wanted him. Who would employ someone on parole? Who would let him into their lives, into their businesses; who would trust him?

Coran had. So had Allura, eventually. And then he’d met Shiro, and suddenly, it was like Keith had a family. He wasn’t just their delivery boy. They were his family, a real family, not like the houses he’d moved between when he was still in the system.

“...and then I found this recipe for cookies online,” Shiro goes on, pulling Keith from his thoughts. 

Keith glances inside the apartment, at the gently smoking lumps of soot evenly spaced out on the pan he’d dropped on the counter. “Ah,” he says.

Whatever else Shiro is about to say is interrupted by the arrival of a crew of firefighters. They bustle into the apartment and sweep Keith and Shiro away in a whirlwind of activity. A fire truck is waiting downstairs, wedged at an angle into the space between two cars parked on the side of the street. 

Keith swallows the sudden lump in his throat, allowing himself to be sat down on the narrow step fitted under the side doors of the truck and checked over by an EMT. This isn’t the same truck he’d pressed his eager little chubby fingers against, securely perched on his dad’s broad shoulders barely past the age of four. This isn’t the same spare turnout jacket swinging from the hook next him, loud orange and neon yellow and made to fit a man, not a child. (How his dad had laughed at him that day, so eager to try it on, so eager to be just like his Pa, but still so very, very small.)

The edge of the step digs into Keith’s palms, aluminum tread plate embossing rows of red diamonds into his skin. 

The rustle of a foil blanket announces Shiro’s arrival. He wedges himself into the small space next to Keith with a sigh.

“Are you okay?” asks Keith with a sideward glance.

“Fine, fine,” Shiro says. “They cleared me to leave. I didn’t breathe in enough smoke to cause serious damage, but they told me to take it easy for the rest of the day.”

Keith nods, not saying anything. He has the sudden urge to reach over and take Shiro’s hand, just to reassure himself that he really is okay, that he really is still there. He doesn’t.

Shiro looks up at the side of the building, where light puffs of white smoke are still gently billowing out the window. He sighs again. Says, “Guess I’m gonna be needing a hotel for a while.”

“You can stay with me,” says Keith in a rush, before his mind realizes what his mouth is doing. He just barely stops his hand from clamping over his lips, stiffening his back and clenching his fingers into a fist instead. 

Keith doesn’t _let_ people come into his house. Not since he’d moved into his own place. It’s one of his unspoken rules, one he doesn’t fully understand. He isn’t even sure why it’s a rule in the first place. All he knows is that his home is his safe space, the only place he doesn’t feel like he has to put up an act, the only place he isn’t in constant fear of people finding him, of people _knowing_ him, and of people inevitably running from him. Having someone else in that space feels like...an invasion. A breach of the walls he’s spent long years putting up, of safety. A knife’s blade of vulnerability cutting into some deep part of him that hunkers behind those walls.

But this is Shiro. Shiro is smart, and kind, and terrible in the kitchen. He’s brilliant, and a little bit of a disaster. But more than any of those things, Shiro had given Keith a chance. He’d looked at Keith, knowing who he was, what he’d done, and his eyes had been nothing but kind.

Keith likes him _so much_. It’s almost like a physical ache in his body. For Shiro, he can bend his rules. For Shiro, he’d do almost anything.

His heart is pounding for an entirely different reason, now.

He stares fixedly at Shiro’s chest, afraid to lift his face and meet his eyes. Afraid because he doesn’t want to see his reaction; it’s too soon in their relationship, everything between them is still too new, _what if Shiro says no_. Afraid because of how suddenly precarious his resolve is, how it might waver at the slightest hint of doubt in Shiro’s eyes.

It feels like minutes whirl by, driven by Keith’s sudden fear. It can’t have been more than a few seconds.

“Are you sure?” Shiro asks eventually. He sounds hesitant. Maybe he spots the doubt on Keith’s face, or maybe he just knows him well enough to know this is something that would scare him. “I’ve never been over before.”

Having him point it out so obviously when Keith has been thinking it so hard feels a little like a punch to the gut. 

But Keith unclenches his hands anyway, swallowing nervously before looking up at Shiro. He feels something heavy slot into place then, like something bigger is happening than just him making this decision.

“I’m sure.”

***

Keith spends the ride to his apartment trying not to think about what he’s doing. Instead of that, he focuses on the feeling of Shiro’s arm wrapped around his waist, on the hard lines of his prosthetic wedged securely between them. On the sting of cold air sneaking like long fingers into the gap of his jacket collar. On the warm comfort of Shiro’s thighs, pressed tightly against his own.

They arrive along with a bluster of wind. The sky has grown dark with storm clouds; it might snow again tonight. Keith parks his bike in the alley and swings off, helping Shiro remove his helmet before taking off his own. 

His apartment building is smaller than Shiro’s, and not in much better condition. But the elevator works, as does the interior heating. It’s blessedly warm inside, and he helps pull Shiro’s jacket off, bundling it into his own arms; Shiro has a small bag with him, nothing more than a few days’ worth of clothes, some toiletries, his charging cables, laptop. 

Keith feels nervous. Well, not nervous exactly—that isn’t the right word. It goes deeper than that, this fear of letting someone into his space. A kind of apprehension, a kind of anxious anticipation of opening himself up like this to someone.

Belatedly, as he unlocks his front door, he has a pang of regret. He should have cleaned his place up a bit before he left. But then again, how could he have known? 

It’s too late now, anyway. All he can do is hastily shuffle together the loose papers strewn across the coffee table (research for a project he is doing for his night classes at university), and stack up the empty glasses and cups dotting the living room.

He dumps them into the sink without looking at Shiro, without checking to see whether he’d followed him inside. As long as he avoids looking at him, as long as he doesn’t see Shiro physically standing there inside his living room, he can pretend that his walls are still up, that he hasn’t just made this radical decision that has upended the hidden stronghold of his mind so tumultuously.

He knows he’s being stupid. He’d _wanted_ this, he reminds himself. And despite the echoes of fear still lingering on the edges of his brain, it doesn’t feel wrong.

He takes a deep breath. Composes himself. This is _Shiro_ , not some stranger. They’ve been in a relationship for just over two months, the longest Keith has ever actively put in an effort to try and stay with someone. Out of everyone Keith knows in his life, there’s no one he would rather have break down this admittedly ridiculous barrier of his.

The realization gives him some confidence, enough to go back into the living room, enough to face Shiro, standing there, right in the center of Keith’s life.

He’s looking at the photographs on the wall; Keith’s only hobby. 

“These are really good,” he says, and Keith blushes slightly. He goes over to take the bag still slung over Shiro’s shoulder, and stands with it in his hands a bit awkwardly.

“What happened back there?” he asks.

“I’m sorry for imposing on you like this,” says Shiro at the same time. He blinks, and backtracks, “The recipe said to bake the cookies for twelve minutes on three-fifty. I guess I thought if I doubled the temperature, I could halve the cooking time…”

He rubs the back of his head embarrassedly. 

In rapid succession, Keith comes to several realizations:

One, Shiro is a terrible cook, and should be kept from going into the kitchen at all costs. 

Two, this endears him to Keith so much he finds himself wishing he could cook for Shiro every day. 

And three, Keith loves him.

He stills at the unbidden thought. 

He loves him. 

Of course he wants Shiro to be with him, inside his most private space, talking to him, laughing with him. He wants Shiro’s warmth and his brilliance and his unending kindness, his secret strength and the secret sadness he only ever allows Keith to see. 

Because Keith loves him.

A wave of calm settles over him. He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. The two of them had come together as easily and naturally as sugar sifted into flour. Being with Shiro is easy. Being happy with Shiro is natural. Keith supposes some part of him must have known he was in love with Shiro since the start. 

Now, with fresh realization curling in his chest, with the certainty of it heavy as thick cream inside of him, he looks at Shiro and thinks, _I love him_ , and the thought doesn’t scare him.

Possibly, he’d loved him before he ever met him.

“The oven doesn’t even go that high,” says Keith, inanely. 

He thinks, _I’m so happy you’re here._

***

Outside, flurries of snow rage through a cloudy night, bowing the trees and wailing around the corners of the building. Inside, the kitchen is bathed in bright white light, and suffused with warmth from the slowly-heating oven. 

A bowl of sifted flour, salt and baking soda sits on the counter next to packets of almonds and sesame seeds. Shiro has been relegated to the barstool at the island separating the kitchen from the living room, only partly because he’d been told to take it easy, and to Keith, anything more than reading instructions off his tablet counts as not doing that.

They’d decided to try the cookies again in the name of getting back on the proverbial horse, reckoning that the number of proverbial horses that could be charged with first-degree arson was probably limited, and hence the chances of another house going up in flames...less.

“How much sugar was it again?” asks Keith.

“One cup,” says Shiro.

Keith dutifully dips a measuring cup into a packet of brown sugar and carefully presses it down with the tips of his fingers.

From the corner of his eye, he spots Shiro’s hand creeping toward the packet of sesame seeds again, and bats it away. “We’re not gonna have enough if you keep eating them.”

Shiro chuckles, appropriately chastised, as Keith turns back to the counter.

“What next?” he asks.

Shiro doesn’t answer. 

Keith turns, poised with the cup in one hand and a question on his lips, to find Shiro standing in front of him. He looks incredibly fond, eyes rounded into soft half-moons above a gentle smile. He uses his thumb to wipe flour off Keith’s cheek, then leans forward to kiss his nose, then the spot behind his ear.

“Wow, how did I get flour all the way back there?” says Keith with an awkward chuckle.

“You didn’t,” says Shiro, his voice soft. “I just felt like doing that.”

Keith feels himself blushing a little, and fights the sudden urge to look away from the softness in Shiro’s eyes, to hide from it. “The cookies…”

Shiro takes the cup of sugar from him and sets it down on the counter. “We’ll finish them later. I just...I wanted to thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Keith fields. “I actually enjoy baking, so.”

“Not for that,” says Shiro. “For...earlier. For this.”

“You’re thanking me for destroying your door?” asks Keith, half-jokingly, and finally looks up at Shiro.

His smile fades. He isn’t prepared for the earnestness in those grey eyes. For the sudden heat of them, for how close they suddenly are to each other. He has to tilt his head back a little; Shiro fills his whole view, warm and broad and tall. 

There are two small sesame seeds stuck below the corner of his mouth.

“I’m thanking you for saving me,” says Shiro, “and for letting me stay here.”

Keith kisses him to hide the fact that he doesn’t know how to respond in the face of such sincerity, and then kisses him again because it feels good, safe, because he loves him. He loves him so much he could die.

It isn’t until Shiro pulls away to stare at him wide-eyed that he realizes he’d said it out loud.

He’d said, “I love you,” and “I love you so much I could die,” and now it’s out there, in the open between them.

Keith wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. He figures out at least seven different ways to escape the country and change his name in the brief silence that follows.

But then Shiro grabs his waist and pulls him even closer, lifts him off his feet lightly in a casual display of strength that leaves Keith weak-kneed, and kisses him so hard he sees stars. Between kisses, he says, “I love you too,”—repeats it over and over until they have to pull away to breathe. Keith feels almost dizzy, his mind hazy around the edges. He feels incredible. 

“Don’t leave,” he blurts out, and, “Stay here forever.” 

He finds he doesn’t regret saying those things. He finds he _wants_ Shiro to stay forever, inside his house, inside his many invisible walls, a slow invasion that feels less like a threat now and more like dawn-gold sunlight spilling through him, over every part of him.

Shiro says, “Yes.”

Shiro says, “I will. Keith, of course I will.”

And Keith kisses sesame seeds from the corner of Shiro’s mouth, and thinks, _this is what love tastes like_.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/comfort_hold) and [tumblr](https://narada-talis.tumblr.com/)~


End file.
